


Treed

by panisdead



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-19
Updated: 2011-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-15 18:50:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panisdead/pseuds/panisdead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the initial impact, there was a lot of thrashing and screaming from McKay, who claimed to have broken all his ribs and punctured a lung and was afraid of heights and generally went on until Ronon thought he might have to knock him out to keep them from falling any farther.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treed

**Author's Note:**

> For Chaosraven. Many thanks to Runpunkrun for the speedy beta.

After the initial impact, there was a lot of thrashing and screaming from McKay, who claimed to have broken all his ribs and punctured a lung and was afraid of heights and generally went on until Ronon thought he might have to knock him out to keep them from falling any farther. The crotch of the tree they'd landed in was giant; wide and spacious enough for the two of them if they didn't move around too much, but they were still easily a couple hundred _taks_ off the ground and Ronon didn't relish the idea of another drop.

"You pushed me over a cliff!" McKay shrieked, still struggling while Ronon pinned him and prodded at his ribcage, feeling gingerly for broken bones. So far McKay was just bruised, although that spot on his forearm was possibly a fracture. "I can't believe you pushed me over a cliff!"

"You wanted to stay up there and get shot?" Ronon flung a leg over McKay to keep him in place and ran his hands lightly over his femurs.

"No, I wanted to stay up there and watch you shoot _them_ , like you're supposed to do when people shove tomahawks in my face!"

"Sheppard said not to." Ronon finished his sweep of McKay's shins and sat back; considered. "And there were about forty of them, they'd have swarmed us." He hadn't really had time to think it through back in the thick of things; he'd simply absorbed the situation, allowed a split second to calculate angles and trajectory and the distance from the edge of the cliff to the spreading branches below, and then leaped. "Can't shoot when you're dead." He patted McKay's calf, satisified. "Don't put too much weight on that arm and you'll be fine."

" _Can't shoot when you're_ \--yes, that little nugget of wisdom completely makes up for your homicidal lunacy and the bizarre, ill-timed _groping_ and my imminent _ow!_ Ow ow ow!" He broke off, clutching his arm to his chest and panting, wide-eyed.

Ronon carefully unclenched McKay's fingers and nudged a couple of the little white pills from the emergency kit into his good hand, pressed it toward McKay's mouth. "Told you to keep the weight off of that side." McKay fumbled with his canteen and got the pills down, complaining all the while, but Ronon tuned him out as soon as he was certain the arm was merely jostled and not further injured. Something was pricking at his memory, something the elder had said while Ronon was spinning, shoving McKay over the edge, leaping out into space; something about "the breath of god." He braced himself carefully against one of the wide, spreading boughs and leaned out. The valley spread out below them, green and smooth, feathered here and there with stands of enormous trees like the one they were in now. Ronon could see the sharp peaks of the mountains opposite, the river, and boiling up from the river an enormous cloud of mist, spilling over the ground toward them at an incredible rate. As he watched, the cloud reached the stand of trees closest to theirs and began to swirl upward. "Get on the radio," he barked at McKay. "Get Sheppard, give him our location. Fast!"

"Right, I never would have thought of that independently," muttered McKay, grabbing at his walkie-talkie with his face tilted toward the rapidly approaching mist. Little flickers of lightning sizzled and popped within the heart of the cloud, and Ronon wished again that Sheppard hadn't sent them off to survey the 'fascinating metal deposits' without the jumper, hadn't smiled with all his teeth and made them hand over their headsets when the elder complained of sacrilege, hadn't pulled him aside and said, "They're a primitive people, Ronon, don't kill anyone unless you absolutely have to."

"McKay! The radio won't work once it gets to us," Ronon ground out, knotting his spare coil of rope around the bough opposite and looping it around both his and McKay's chests. The trees weren't shaking like there was wind, but you never knew.

"I thought you said you didn't have RF signal technology on Sateda!" yelled McKay. "Colonel Sheppard! This is McKay, come in, godammit!"

"No, but we had _weather_."

"Rodney!" crackled the radio. "Where the hell--" and then the cloud rushed over them and all Ronon could hear was the snap of electricity and the crack of branches bursting into flame. Oh, and McKay.

It turned out there was wind after all.

When Ronon could breathe again, the electrical storm had passed. The mist had settled over them; damp, white, and clinging, it reduced his visibility to the distance from his outstretched hand to his face. He spat out his mouthful of bitter-tasting leaves and felt along the makeshift guideline to the edge of their perch, dragged McKay back to the center of the tree by his vest and the waistband of his pants. McKay hadn't been blown that far sideways, really, not even all the way over the edge, and the line probably would have held even if he'd fallen, but he was shaking violently and his voice kept cutting out when he tried to yell. Ronon gave him a cursory sweep for additional injuries--none--then knelt behind McKay with one hand over his chest and the first two fingers of the other on his thigh, on the eighth pressure point, not hard enough to render him unconscious, just enough to calm. Some time passed.

Eventually, McKay pushed his hands away and said, "Stop touching me, you gorilla," in a more-or-less normal voice. Satisfied, Ronon shifted away and leaned against a branch, took a swig from his canteen. McKay fiddled with his radio, getting nothing but dead air. After several minutes he shoved it back in his pocket in disgust and shifted around carefully until he was facing Ronon through the curtain of mist. "Well, we'll just have to assume that either Colonel Sheppard managed to get enough information to triangulate our position before the storm hit us, or that he'll be bright enough to remember that he can pick up our heat signatures from the jumper. It'll be a stretch for him, I know, but I for one am not moving one muscle over that ledge until I can see further than the end of my nose." He swiped irritably at his face, flinging away drops of moisture. "I hate this planet."

"I've seen better," Ronon agreed. He settled more comfortably against the bark. He was prepared to wait until Sheppard rescued them. On his own, the climb down might have been manageable, even pleasant with good visibility, but he didn't trust McKay's arm to support his weight over the lengthy distance to the ground. Plus, his ears were still ringing from the storm. No need to suggest the climb and add McKay's noise to that.

Some more time passed. McKay fussed intermittently with the radio, took a bunch of little tools out of his belt and pried off the back cover, fussed some more, keeping up a steady, low-grade mutter throughout. Ronon ate half a powerbar and gave the other half to McKay. McKay ate a powerbar and did not offer to share. Ronon stared at the label on his empty wrapper and thought about Earth writing, about the titles of the books Lt. Cadman sometimes read to him in the common room, about names. People from Earth had a lot of names.

"Rodney," he said experimentally.

McKay's head snapped up. "Oh my God, what's the matter? Are you dying?"

"No," said Ronon, calculating. "That's your name." He eyed McKay questioningly. "Sheppard calls you Rodney."

"Yes, and that time on MX6-871 with the 'fragrant herbs' Colonel Sheppard called everyone including the Grand Poohbah 'buttercup,' doesn't mean you should to go taking liberties."

"Hmm," Ronon said. McKay stared at him uneasily for a moment, then went back to his radio. After a while, Ronon's shoulder started to itch where he'd gotten scratched falling through the thinner upper limbs, so he shifted around a little and started to work the twigs and leaves out of his hair to distract himself. It was harder than he expected; the easy availability of soap and showers on Atlantis meant that nowadays his _riega_ were clean and soft, but the heavy mist blanketing everything raised a tacky outer coating on the leaves that made them stick to the strands of hair. The back of his head was particularly difficult to reach. After a few awkward attempts to remove sticky little seedpods, he sat up and gestured to get McKay's attention. "Can you--"

"What, I'm Jane Goodall? No grooming." McKay gave him a dismissive look.

"It's _itchy_. And you're not going to get reception until the mist clears anyway." Ronon widened his eyes and stuck his lip out the way Sheppard sometimes did when he wanted a favor. It worked; McKay huffed and muttered irritably, but after a few moments he scooted over to Ronon and started working seedpods out of his hair. Ronon slumped down to give him better access and sighed contentedly. "My sisters used to fix my hair for me," he said after a minute. He half-turned to show McKay, rolled his fingers together in the twisting motion needed for the _riega_. "Back on Sateda."

"Yes, I got that," McKay said, but he sounded calm rather than sarcastic. He pushed Ronon down a little further and started working near his left temple. "Jeanie used to put mine in french braids."

"That's your sister?" The urge to turn around and burrow into McKay's lap was strong. Ronon hadn't thought of his siblings for months, but the light pressure of McKay's knees at his back and the hypnotic motion of fingers in his hair made him feel hollowed out with homesickness. He wanted to curl around someone soft and warm and clean-smelling, let her stroke his neck and back and press kisses to his scalp while she giggled with the others somewhere over his head. He dug his fingers roughly into his thighs to stop the memory and turned his attention back to McKay's voice.

"Jeanie, yes. Eww." McKay jerked back suddenly and wiped his hand on his pants. "You had a bug in there. Partial bug, I should say."

Ronon picked up the discarded thorax and examined it, ignoring McKay's groan of dismay. He'd spent too many years beating his food to death with rocks to be squeamish. Hmm. The iridescence was different, but otherwise--he turned fully around to face McKay and grinned at him through the mist, riding a sudden, unexpected surge of happiness. "We had these at home," he said, brandishing the thorax in McKay's face. McKay flinched away and glared at him.

"We have crickets on Earth too, but you don't see me getting all eager beaver about it."

"No, these were special," Ronon grinned, feeling the ache of memory gentle to a pleasant reminder. "When Leges--the second moon--was under eclipse, we'd gather them in baskets for roasting."

"Oh my god, and Sheppard swore you were from a civilized planet!" McKay's face twisted in revulsion. "Of course, he probably thinks a nation of insectivores qualifies."

Ronon grinned some more and made exaggerated chewing motions just to watch McKay squirm. "They're good," he said. "Crunchy." The Leges ritual was purely symbolic, hearkening back to a much older time, but there was no reason to tell McKay that.

"Oh, that's just lovely. Too bad--" McKay broke off suddenly with a look of dawning horror. "Oh no. The grooming, the touching remembrances, the given names--like there's any point to an honorific if people don't _use_ it--we're _bonding,_ aren't we. I don't believe it. Did Heightmeyer put you up to this? It just _figures._ "

"Yeah, Heightmeyer made me throw you off a cliff." Ronon grimaced. At least the urge to snuggle with McKay was fading.

"Well, okay, I admit that part seems a bit far-fetched, but the rest of this little interlude just reeks of cheap intervention." McKay broke into falsetto, waving his arms around: "We all crave human _companionship,_ Rodney, it's okay to make yourself emotionally vulnerable to your _friends_ , Rodney, maybe your staff would be more productive if you didn't verbally _bludgeon_ them, Rodney--"

"Ohh," nodded Ronon, catching on. His counseling sessions hadn't been optional either. He tried out a little falsetto of his own: "It's okay to share your _feelings_."

"Yes! Yes, exactly!" McKay seemed to have forgotten his injury in his excitement, gesturing wildly. "I don't need to practice sharing my feelings, I share my feelings all the goddamn time!"

"I think she means--"

"I have an open and generous nature! Not to mention it's my duty as a more highly evolved member of the human race to edify and instruct, and--"

Ronon leaned in close, put a hand on McKay's forearm, and gave him the soulful Sheppard eyes again. "Rodney, you're a respected and valuable member of this expedition. You _belong_." McKay's mouth snapped shut and his eyes widened. Ronon clamped down on his laughter; waited.

"Oh my _god_ , that's unnerving. Really. Don't do that again." His expression turned disgruntled as Ronon started to shake with laughter, but slid soon enough to grudging amusement, and finally chuckling. "Okay, fine, we're having a moment here, aren't we. Just don't expect any special treatment because of this."

"Nah." Ronon relaxed back against the tree, still laughing, then cocked his head. There was a low humming sound just at the edge of his hearing; it seemed to be getting louder. "Hey, that sounds like--" he said, just as the mist parted to show the rear of the jumper, hatch already lowering.

"Took you long enough," groused McKay to Sheppard a few minutes later as Ronon pulled him through the rear exit. "This Neanderthal threw me off a cliff! Just look at my arm!"

***************  
Three weeks later Atlantis's second moon eclipsed. When Ronon got back to his quarters that night, there was a jar of live crickets and a butane torch on his bed. He pocketed both, smiled, and headed to the lab to find Rodney.

End.


End file.
